I'm just curious as I have only ever worked in an all PC organizational environment. I know many factors have to be tossed around because of what software is being used. Out of personal experience would you say PC environments or Apple ones seem to operate better?

I suspect (but have no hard evidence) that the organizations which work the best are the ones that choose the OS for each system based on what the system is used for rather than a blanket "we are a Microsoft IT organization" or "we are an Apple IT organization" decree.

My workplace uses mostly MS Windows, but we also have several Linux users, and a lone Apple fanatic who insists on doing nearly everything on his iPad. Server infrastructure is pretty evenly split between Windows and Linux. All things considered, I'd say things run reasonably smoothly. Most of the IT-related pain isn't really platform-specific, it is more due to general stupidity...

I've worked in environments that have been mixed. The most whining occurs when people want/need a particular program that is platform-specific. Then you get the whole "why do they get another machine" issue, unless its just a matter of running a VM on a Mac. If we could run OSX in a VM on a PC as easily as Windows runs in a VM on a Mac, it'd be perfect.

TheEmrys wrote:I've worked in environments that have been mixed. The most whining occurs when people want/need a particular program that is platform-specific. Then you get the whole "why do they get another machine" issue, unless its just a matter of running a VM on a Mac. If we could run OSX in a VM on a PC as easily as Windows runs in a VM on a Mac, it'd be perfect.

You /can/ run OSX on Windows in a VM, and I do, but it's of questionable legality at best.

TheEmrys wrote:I've worked in environments that have been mixed. The most whining occurs when people want/need a particular program that is platform-specific. Then you get the whole "why do they get another machine" issue, unless its just a matter of running a VM on a Mac. If we could run OSX in a VM on a PC as easily as Windows runs in a VM on a Mac, it'd be perfect.

Yes, VMs really do make heterogeneous environments less of an issue than they used to be. Some of our Windows users run Linux VMs, and all of our Linux users run Windows VMs to deal with the situations where we need to do something that isn't handled well by our native desktop OS. As long as you've got enough RAM and a CPU with hardware virtualization support you're good to go.

mdk77777 wrote:Are VM now supporting GPU compute?Just curious. Seems like quite a few programs are utilizing the GPU accelerations. If the trend continues, I wonder how long before users demand it in A VM.

I remember an article here on TR about virtual emulation of graphical acceleration. I don't think it's ready yet, but it's coming.

If there is one thing a remote-controlled, silent and unseeable surveillance/killing machine needs, it’s more whimsy. -- Marcus